What does it mean to be HIP?

Written by Bonnie de la Hunty, HIP Company soprano and co-director.
August 17, 2020.

Our name, “HIP Company”, is a play on the acronym “HIP”, often used in the Early Music world to denote “Historically Informed Performance”.

The HIP movement largely began in the 70s and 80s, when orchestras began to strive to be more authentic when recreating music from the 17th and 18th centuries and earlier, and this continues to grow today. It’s about researching the performing conventions of the time, and using this to inform how we interpret this music now. We read treatises by musicians and scholars of the time, first-hand accounts of performances, and apply knowledge of the technology and instruments that would have been available.

We HIP Company musicians specialize in Baroque music. Music at this time was often not notated as specifically as it is today – a major reason was that it was all hand written, so composers didn’t have time to write out exactly how they’d want it to be played. Nor did they need to, because it was assumed at the time that a performer would read a certain phrase of music and know how to embellish the melody, or how to fill in the harmonies from the written bass line, or how a rhythm might actually be played slightly differently from the way it was notated, and so on.

Playing historical instruments, as we do, also helps us to recreate the sound world and technique of the time. For example, a Baroque violin’s strings are made of gut (usually sheep), and have a distinctive soft and warm sound. The violin was played without a modern shoulder or chin rest, so it has to be held a little differently, and the Baroque bow is shorter and more curved than the modern bow – necessitating a different technique and style of playing to its modern equivalent.

Why are we so passionate that all of this can still be relevant and ‘hip’ today? We find that observing a framework actually grants us freedom in interpreting early music and searching for its truth. It tells that the composer would not only have allowed us to, but in fact expected us to, make many of our own decisions to transform the dots on the page into meaningful phrases of music. Also, while a modern audience brings a different perspective and expectations to a 17th century audience, it is something quite magical to bring to life ancient music and find that any element of it – a beautiful melody, a touching dissonance in the harmony, a joyful dance rhythm – can reach humans from any time if we can really channel its core.

Every genre of music develops its own implicit performance conventions over time, and we as a group are fascinated by exploring relationships between genres. In particular, we often perform traditional folk music and even occasionally some jazz. Playing jazz on Baroque instruments is of course not historically ‘authentic’, but juxtaposing the old with the new helps to foreground our understanding of how time and place shapes musical interpretation. Like Baroque music, folk and jazz music require decision making based around known conventions. Knowing what the rules are and how to break them, allows a wonderful freedom.

To be historically informed means to be willingly and lovingly influenced by context when performing, and to recognize where that is different from the compositional context. We think it’s up to us to then decide how to merge together a piece’s origins, with ourselves and our own audience. This decision is complex and beautiful, and is what inspires us to keep being HIP!

If you’d like to know more about Historically Informed Performance, we’d happily chat for hours about it – feel free to send us an email or speak to us after one of our concerts.